


convivencia

by pilynator



Category: Mystic Messenger (Video Game)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Gender Neutral MC - Freeform, Slice of Life, you pronouns
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-05
Updated: 2018-12-05
Packaged: 2019-09-12 11:38:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16872243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pilynator/pseuds/pilynator
Summary: Jihyun and MC learn the delicate art of compromising.For Jihyun x MC week.Day 3:angst||cinema





	convivencia

**Author's Note:**

> This one is...okay. I was forcing myself to write and it shows - it's not purposeful and doesn't know what it wants to be. Oh well. Might as well archive it. Just in case.
> 
>  **Original A/N** : Tbh, this is just an excuse to dump a couple of random domestic V headcanons somewhere. Don’t worry, there’s cinema talk in this.

Making the jump to moving in together had felt normal at the time, the natural conclusion to being separated for so long. You hadn’t talked about it, or even hinted at it, but more and more of your things had made it into his apartment and created little you-shaped enclaves and, well… _The space is limited and it’s exhausting to jump over piles of clothes_ , he’d said.  _You might as well use the closet, I don’t have a lot of things in there_ , he’d said. And so you did. It had improved your quality or life considerably and made the morning trek to the kitchen a lot easier, so you’d count it as a win. Jihyun had also looked  _extremely_  pleased with himself for the next couple of weeks, almost suspiciously so, although the decrease in small domestic accidents might have had something to do with it.

Cooking utensils had been next. He’d casually suggested a bake-off date one day, seemingly forgetting he didn’t have anything more complicated than a chopping board stored in the kitchen. There was also a baffling number of spoons, three forks and a single paring knife with an intricate handle design.  _A souvenir from Toledo_ , he’d explained cheerfully. And the spoons?  _I just think they’re beautiful._  They're woefully mismatched, each one from a different set, with nothing even remotely cohesive between them.  _That’s what I like about them_ ,  _they looked like they were looking for a good home._

The hand mixer and a bowl were the first implements to make the move across the city. You lose the bake off, but it doesn’t feel like a defeat. Not with little reminders of your encroaching presence strewn about the place. It eventually reaches a point where you have to pack a bag to  _leave_ , which is when Jihyun finally decides to break the impasse and actually ask you to move in.

There is an invitation. It’s handwritten, messy, and he sketched a sleeping cat next to your name. That was when you realised you hadn’t been over to your place for more than two days at a time in  _months_. You scribble your answer on the back of an old ticket you find in your bag and mail it back to him. It’s a left over from an aquarium date and it spends the next couple of weeks stuck to the fridge door with a magnet until you convince Jihyun to take it down. You’re pretty sure he’s still got it around somewhere, hidden in a book or something similar. The house was littered with little bits and pieces of memories he’d collected over the years, tactile reminders of his existence stored in the most unusual of places ( _under flower pots, behind the bed, taped to the ceiling_ ), and it didn’t seem like he was willing to part with your reply just yet.

Getting used to living in the same space then became a slow process of negotiating space and charting unfamiliar territory into recognisable shapes. The most important of these are the points of convergence: figuring out how to manage the tiny kitchen or how to share a work space when Jihyun needs to let oil paintings dry or what cereal to buy - anything that requires a blending of habits instead of adjusting boundaries. They are all accompanied by a push and pull until you both settle into a common pattern, at which point any friction disappears and they’re absorbed into the rhythm of everyday life. A system emerged, eventually, but it was getting to that point that had proven to be complicated.

The process was generally made easier by the fact that Jihyun was so accommodating, but you were surprised to find him being weirdly stubborn in some instances. The fact that he was finding it easier to assert his will was a good sign, and you were certainly proud and willing to encourage that, but he was choosing to double down on the most baffling of points. Keeping all his succulents on his desk, even when there was plenty of space ( _and sunlight!_ ) on the windowsill was one of these. Insisting on leaving food on said windowsill for random city birds and inviting a whirlwind of feathers and noise was another. And the worst, the absolute worst, had to be deciding on a movie to watch together. Moving in officially had not made this easier. In fact, it had made the things even more complicated and it had all started when you couldn’t decide on the best way to handle your combined DVD collection.

You’d first suggested organising alphabetically, which had made Jihyun protest that he wouldn’t be able to find anything like that. It was silly, of course, he’d just have to look for the name of whatever it was he wanted to watch.  _What if I don’t know what I want to watch?_ , he’d pouted and you had to give in and admit that yes, having it make sense to the two of you was more important than being easy to sort through.

The next suggestion had been by genre, his preferred option. This worked better, but you ran into an issue with things that didn’t slot so neatly into a category. Jihyun had also insisted on having a separate animation section, for inspiration, but that left you with Disney movies next to your copy of  _Ghost in the Shell_ next to his  _The King of Pigs_ next to a series of bootleg  _Tom and Jerry_ DVDs he was inexplicably attached to. Drama had also been on the receiving end of a thousand reworks and a small one-sided fight when he refused to let you make a separate ‘Oscar bait’ category. You retaliated by redistributing his carefully-curated historical drama selection throughout the rest of the collection, insisting that being set in the past did not qualify for a genre either.

In the end, it took a full 3 weeks to sort everything out, settling on a mix between genre and release date. That’s when the Wednesday night movie date tradition started for real. Sort of. It was difficult to arrange; it wasn’t so much that you had radically different tastes in cinema, but that you always seemed to be slightly out of sync. You’d be dying for an action movie and Jihyun would be shyly trying to push a sappy romance into your hands. He’d wake up with a craving for a thriller and you’d be debating how to sell him on a comedy. This would then devolve into both of you trying to back down at the same time, leaving you with no actual resolution and no movie to watch. This had carried on until, one day, after a prolonged battle of very aggressively trying to reel back from a fight that wasn’t even a fight, Jihyun looked at you and said you should let chance decide.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Next time, let’s go out to the nearest cinema. One of us picks a random time and we buy tickets for the screening closest to it.’

You'd opened your mouth to protest and then closed it again, a bit more thoughtfully. It was definitely a thing Jihyun would suggest. Bizarrely endearing, unexpected and somehow functional, but not very practical. Strange way to break a stalemate, but there was something exciting about the idea of a mystery show. And so, next Saturday found you on a movie date at the nearest cinema.

It turned out to be a small, independently ran place which ran a selection of foreign movies. A good deal of them had been shot in black and white. Jihyun had lead you to the time table display and put his hands on your eyes while you moved your finger in irregular patterns around the titles. Eventually, you picked something which didn’t leave you with a lot of time to waste. You hadn’t planned for long waiting times, which, in hindsight, felt like a bit of an oversight. He laughed when you voiced that thought, hands grabbing at yours gently.

‘The point of a spontaneous decision is to remove planning, you know.’

It was true, but you didn’t want to give him the satisfaction, so you just stuck your tongue out, childishly. That earned another laugh and a shoulder bump. You felt warm on the inside in a way that had nothing to do with the coffee you’d shared earlier in the day, a pleasant contentment spreading through your limbs and making you sleepy.

Eventually, you went in, attempting to find your seats. There were only a few people in there, a smattering mostly focused on the central rows. He made a move towards them, but you tugged lightly on his hand and directed him towards the back, where it was the darkest.

‘It’s our Wednesday night replacement trial, remember? Let’s keep it personal.’

Picking those seats ended up being an inspired choice, you told yourself about thirty minutes later. The movie was meandering, with no real plot or conflict, and you could feel yourself getting more and more disinterested with every passing moment. During an especially boring part, you took the opportunity to lean against his shoulder, relishing in the warmth coming through in waves from under his jacket. It was at this same moment that Jihyun chose to lean in and whisper conspiratorially in your ear: ‘That man in the back looks like a weird mushroom.’

You tried to locate the man in the scene currently unfolding and yes, sure enough, a man with a strange mushroom-shaped hat became strikingly clear now that you knew what to look for. You stifled a giggle behind your palm, but it wasn't enough, earning you a couple of glares from the rest of the audience. It’s all Jihyun needed, though, as he spent the rest of the movie pointing out the strangest costume design choices he could spot. And there, in the dark, with his hand on his knee and his excited whispers in the air, was when you realised there was no one else you’d argue with about the merits of a matching set of spoons.

 


End file.
